Install DOSBox On Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

It is indeed a remarkable irony that it’s no longer possible to play many old DOS games on Windows Vista or Windows 7, but with proper software, you can play the same old games on Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin. All you need is DOSBox, an emulation environment that lets you run old DOS games. As an added bonus, DOSBox is quite easy to install. Simply go to a Terminal window and type this command:

sudo apt-get install dosbox

(If you don’t know how to find a Terminal window, click on the “Dash”, the Ubuntu icon on the upper-right hand corner of your screen, and search for Terminal.)

Follow the default prompts, and DOSBox will install itself and a few other necessary packages on your Ubuntu system. After DOSBox is installed, you can launch it by going to the Dash, searching for “DOSBox”, and clicking on the DOSBox icon. AOr you can simply launch it from the command line:

dosbox

Now, since DOSBox relies on the old DOS system of drive letters, and Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal does not, you may be wondering how to mount your drives. Fortunately, this is quite simple. Let’s say you create a directory named dos in your home directory to serve as the C: drive during your DOS session. To mount as a C: drive, use this command while in DOSBox:

mount c ~/dos

To mount your optical drive as a D: drive, use this command:

mount d -t cdrom /media/cdrom

Using these commands, you should be able to play a good many old DOS games on your Ubuntu system.